


Reminisce: Past

by tylerno



Series: Reminisce [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Marauders, NOT A GRYFFINDOR, although he is still a frickin' rat later on, he just needs a hug, it's okay tho bc he finds a boi, marauder era, mcgonagall is a great mom, peter pettrigrew is actually adorable, remus also likes her but the poor boy gets his heart broken :'(, shy character, sirius is a total playboy, what did she do to deserve his treatment lol, why was the suggested tag 'Steve Rogers is not a virgin'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-06-06 12:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15195227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tylerno/pseuds/tylerno
Summary: Sirius Black, having cleared his name after the battle at the Ministry, finds himself with a war on his hands. His godson is struggling, Dumbledore isn't talking to him, and he just wants things to go back to the way they were back when he was their age. Back in fourth year, with James, Remus, and yes, even Peter. But most of all, he misses... her.





	1. Spared, but Just Barely

Sirius Black, needless to say, hadn't had the greatest life. He was a kind soul that would've been pure if not for what he and others around him had experienced. He enjoyed pranks, he made a hobby of trying and failing to be a professional flirt; he was a dog person, he hated being pinned down, and loved it when people depended on him, even if he needed someone to depend on more. He loved, he hurt, he laughed, he cried. He was human. Irrevocably, terribly human.

He missed his family, so much so that merely existing without them left his chest aching during every second of every day. Of course, he didn't mean his mother or his brother. He meant James. He meant the Marauders. He meant  _her._

So when Harry left for his fifth year at Hogwarts, he found himself lonely. Buckbeak was great, no problem, but he missed having Harry around. It was almost like having James back, if James had gotten round glasses instead of square, and had a bit smaller of a bully streak. When he heard that Harry had gone to the Ministry to fall for what was obviously a trap, he ignored Dumbledore's pleadings of him staying behind and very nearly bit anyone who wandered too close.

The arch was terrible. Sirius felt cold, and he felt truly alone for the first time since Azkaban. He couldn't breathe, could hardly think, and all he knew was that he had to get _outoutout_! Death, that wretched, twisted space of nothingness, was so shocked by the kick to the face that he allowed Sirius to slither away like the snake his parents had wished him to be.

When he could breathe again, he did so in gasping pants that tore past his chapped lips and filled his sore lungs. His ears were ringing, and his hair was tangled in his eyelashes, which sent him into a rapid panic.

Right then was not the first time Sirius had experienced a panic attack.

When he became aware of himself, there was a tight grip of someone's hands on his shoulders, and a tired voice that normally was quiet was shouting at him, or maybe shouting for him. Sirius clawed the hair from his eyes, jerking away from the unfamiliar touch, only to force himself back into it when he recognized Remus.

If one didn't have the context, one might be confused at the sight of two men holding each other like children, one greasy and heaving choked breaths and the other patting him down as if checking for injury.

"Sirius, if you do that again my heart may not be able to take it," Remus nearly sobbed, managing a laugh through his distraught expression.

Sirius just grinned unsteadily, claimed, "I've gotta keep you on your toes, now haven't I," and promptly passed out.

The next time he woke up, he hardly registered the voice of James Potter before he was sitting up and tumbling from his bed and onto the floor. Several voices exclaimed, "Sirius!" The man just forced himself to his feet, even though he could barely see through the blood rushing from his head and could barely hear through the sound of his own heartbeat.

He squeezed his eyes shut until he could feel his eyelashes on his cheeks, a groan slipping from him before he could quell it.

Once everything decided to stop spinning and once his stomach settled, he slowly opened his eyes again. Dumbledore was kneeling over him, with Harry and Remus hovering anxiously behind him. Sirius suddenly realized that Harry was talking.

"--e alright? What happened? Let me see, I need to see him."

Only a fool would miss the desperation in his godson's voice, and it was then that Sirius realized that he had been dead. It was barely a shadow of a shadow of a memory, but the realization sent him stumbling onto his feet again, allowing Dumbledore to keep a hand on his upper arm. Sirius knew he would fall otherwise.

"Harry," he croaked, and got an incredulous laugh in response.

"Sirius," he replied, and then the two were locked in a tight embrace. Harry might've been crying, but Sirius was very nearly in the same state, but covered it with a rasping laugh. He clapped a calloused hand on Harry's shoulder, rocking the two from side to side.

It was only a great time later that, once returned to 12 Grimmuald Place, Harry confronted Sirius about what had been whiling away at his heart for some time.

"Sirius."

The man, surprised at hearing his name, turned from where he had been staring into the fireplace and looked to his godson with a somewhat startled expression. He didn't speak, however, and in that moment he realized how much he had really changed from when he was a boy.

"When... At the Ministry," Harry began, pushing his glasses up and then dropping his hands to play with the end of his shirt, "You called me... you said, 'Nice one, James.' And I couldn't help but wonder... well, it got me thinking. I'm not--you don't see me as just a... I dunno, just a replacement of my dad, do you?"

Harry seemed rather tentative about asking, as if he fully intended his fears to be realized. Sirius, with a tiny "no," moved forward instantly to stand with Harry, the two of them leaning their hips against the back of the grubby, old, moth-eaten couch.

"Harry, I accidentally call a lot of people by your father's name. We were as good as brothers, you have to understand, and sometimes I still see him... in you, most of all. But listen here. You are not James. As much as I want your dad back, I know he's gone for good. He's not coming back, and he's not you. I miss him, for sure, but I would never trade him for you."

Sirius placed a hand on Harry's shoulder, trying his best to speak around the painful lump in his throat.

"You are you and I am so _bloody_ thankful for that."

Harry nodded tersely, his fingers reaching up to brush against his scar. He didn't seem to realize he was doing it.

"You know," Sirius mused in a new tone, "I met the love of my life making the same mistake."

At this, the man's godson looked up with a frown. He hadn't known there ever _was_ a love of his life, and was obviously eager to hear about them. Whoever they were.

"Really?" Green 

"Really. It was just at the end of our third year..."

_Sirius Black would be turning 14 in exactly six days, and yet he could hardly bring himself to care. Things were pretty official with his family. Regulus had bestowed upon him the knowledge that, in a fit of rage, his mother had turned his face on the family tree to nothing more than a little black burn mark. Sirius scoffed at the poor attempt at pity that Regulus had tried. It was clear mockery._

_But he couldn't worry about that now. He was standing, tapping his foot impatiently, in front of the train, while he waited on James to finish trying (and failing) to flirt with Evans. He had, at some point, lost sight of the two (three with Snivellus, but he hardly counted, anyway), and was left behind to wait on the Potter boy._

_After a good five minutes, which was five minutes too long, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Before turning around, he exclaimed, "James! What the bloody hell took so... long?"_

_He had, in fact, made a mistake. The girl standing in front of him now was very clearly not James Potter. In fact, the only thing she had in common were the glasses. However, even that has a difference, as hers were more rectangular than square. She also had short hair, but it was vastly longer than James', hanging about her chin in natural curls. She was rather short, almost comically so, and her timid and somewhat frightened expression really didn't help Sirius take her, well, seriously._

_"You're not James, you're far too pretty for that," he grinned, watching as the wink he sent her way, coupled with his flirtatious words, turned her face thousands of shades of red. Sirius noted, somewhat dimly, that her nose was almost a fire engine color. Wow._

_"Um... no. I'm not. Sorry. I just wanted to say that your shoe..." she gestured down to it, and upon looking, Sirius discovered that it was untied._

_"Oh," he said dumbly. "Thanks."_

_Sirius was used to girls talking to him. He was tall, dark, and handsome, and his semi-long hair fit the 70's style to a T whenever he decided to spend a little time on it. Naturally, plenty of the female population, both older and younger (although not anyone older than fourth year, as that would be plain weird), tried to talk to him and pretend that they didn't have crushes._

_Sirius dropped to the ground to tie his shoe, doing so with practiced ease and nimble fingers. He fully expected to see the girl standing there, smile on her face and trying to start a conversation now that she had done something for him._

_But when he returned to his feet, she had become lost to the crowd. Sirius, of course, looked for her. His tall frame didn't exactly hurt, but being thirteen didn't exactly help, either. He spent a good while looking for her (hey, she was rather cute) until an arm plonked itself right on his shoulders, and James made his appearance at last._

_"Hey, mate, who're you looking for?" James asked, an easy grin on his lips. His glasses seemed to glint in the morning light, and he seemed completely unbothered by the crowd around them._

_"Nah," Sirius hummed, "just some chick. She left, though."_

_At this, James laughed, a wholehearted one that left Sirius frowning. "What's so funny?!"_

_"Nothing, nothing! Just that the ladies' man Sirius Black got turned down! Oooo."_

_"Hey!" Sirius playfully pushed James away, but the two boys just laughed together._

_"C'mon, time to go home," James said, amusement in his voice. The other boy rolled his eyes, pretending to ignore the fact that both of them were very obviously grinning widely._

_"Alright, let's go."_


	2. The Cutie in the Back of the Class

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius has a dream- or was it a nightmare?

_"SIRIUS!" Harry's voice cracked as he screamed, throat raw but mind uncaring. The man himself could do nothing more than stare up at him, nothing more than watch as his godson screamed until his voice gave out and cried until his sleeves were soaked. Sirius' hair was sticky where it came into contact with his face, and he could feel a space on the back of his head where his skin was missing._

_The soul had been sucked out of his body._

_Suddenly, everything was different, and the space between them grew exponentially. Sirius could move again, but this time he couldn't be seen by Harry._

_"Sirius! No- no! SIRIUS!" He screamed, and he sobbed, but a shadow kept him from moving forward. Sirius leaned forward, trying to unstick his feet, but his fingers couldn't quite make it._

_"Harry, Harry, calm down, it's me, I'm right here, Harry look at me-"_

_"SIRIUS! SIRIUS SIRIUS SIRIUS SIRIUS SIRIUS SIRIUS SIRIUS SIRIUS SIRIUS SIRIUSSIRIUSSIRIUSSIRIUS-"_

_" **It's okay, Sirius.** "_

_Sirius had one hand placed on the back of his neck, a sheepish smile firmly in place as he stood before the girl from the train station. He held a wadded up ball of paper in one hand, the very same that he had accidentally hit her in the face with in the middle of Transfigurations class. Safe to say that he had a detention with McGonagall later that evening, but he additionally owed an apology to the girl._

_Speaking of, she was just as cute as Sirius remembered. Her glasses were slipping down her nose, which was scrunched in an attempt to keep them from falling off her face altogether. Small hands were white-knuckled as she fought to keep from dropping her books. She looked harrowed and stressed, but why? Sirius couldn't figure it out. It wasn't anywhere near end-of-year exams, nor was there any drama in the school (at the time). Even so, there were dark circles under her eyes, and her knees were trembling the slightest bit._

_All the same, she smiled at Sirius and forgave him for accidentally nailing her right on the shnozz in his quest to pass a note to James, who sat next to her. It was admirable, really; he knew people who would yell at him for less._

_"It's not really okay, though," he finally protested after a good moment of ogling (or in his words, "thoughtfully admiring") her. "I gotta make it up somehow- as terrible as the old bat is, my mum didn't raise an arse."_

_Peter Pettigrew, who had accidentally spilled all his books from his bag, chose that time to scamper out of the classroom. "Yes, she did," he chimed, giving a cheeky grin before scampering away. Sirius pulled a face at his back, but quickly turned back to the shorter girl before him. Her tanned skin had crinkled at the corners of her eyes with mirth, and Sirius had to take a moment to compose himself before continuing on._

_"So, do you need help getting your books to your classes or something? I mean- I've got a free period. It'd be no issue, really, and you seem to be... ah. There they go."_

_Both parties stared blankly as the book and rolls of parchment fell from her arms and landed in a way just so that they landed with a loud slap on the floor._

_"Oh," the girl murmured, but made no move to pick up her things. Instead, she looked up at Sirius from hazy eyes. "I do seem to be rather tired. Oh, dear."_

_All at once, Sirius couldn't move again. The soles of his feet were stuck firmly to the floor, and his legs had seemed to turn to stone. His heart was in no better of a circumstance._

_The girl fell to her knees with a dry, rasping cough, which turned into a terrible fit. Her hands had flown to her face, glasses discarded to the side. Slowly, as her shoulders hunched from the force of her hacking, a thick, red liquid began to seep from her fingers._

_Sirius' ears were ringing. He might've been crying. His heart beat faster and faster and faster until he felt it could fly out of his chest and flop into a wet lump on the cold floor, adding to the puddle gathering under the girl's hands._

_Slowly, with blood dribbling from her lips, she lifted her head._ _Her eyes were blank._

_Her silence was more torturous than any screaming._

Sirius' eyes flew open, his entire body heaving in a rush of sheets and sweat and  _he had watched her die and he should have done something and why was he so useless-?_

It took a moment, but when he came down from his panic attack, he lifted his face (which was irritated from obsessive clawing at it) and turned bleary eyes to the grandfather clock in the corner of the room.

4:44.

And the irony of it all made him screw up his face and grab great fistfuls of his hair.

Of course it was. Of course. Of course.


End file.
